Chile telescope
ALMA slices star’s bubble
cloaked beauty revealed
senryu by M. Nakazato LaFreniere
ALMA is the European Southern Observatory’s radio telescope, located on the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
I am not about to try to explain the technical terms as I don’t really understand them. I just thought this was an amazing picture of the bubble around the red star. The image would not have been possible without the special abilities of the ALMA telescope. Read the more indepth article, Ageing Star Blows Off Smoky Bubble, by the European Southern Observatory if you want to know more.
About the Object
Name: U Antliae
Type: Milky Way : Star : Type : Variable
Constellation: Antlia
Category: Stars
Quoting from the European Southern Observatory site:
“This image was created from ALMA data on the unusual red carbon star U Antliae and its surrounding shell of material. The colours show the motion of the glowing material in the shell along the line of sight to the Earth. Blue material lies between us and the central star, and is moving towards us. Red material around the edge is moving away from the star, but not towards the Earth. For clarity this view does not include the material on the far side of the star, which is receding from us in a symmetrical manner.”
UAntliae Photo credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), F. Kerschbaum
Photo copyright: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Ageing Star Blows Off Smoky Bubble, European Southern Observatory, September 20, 2017
Cloaked
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